A Changing Society.

With the advent of the 1940s came an increased prosperity as well as the higher risk of conflict with other nations. Both possibilities had effects on the law. The efforts of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, first elected in 1932, to fight the Great Depression with his New Deal program led to great changes in society and government and brought challenges in the legal realm from both advocates and opponents. Roosevelt's almost dictatorial attitude toward bending the courts to his way of thinking, the most obvious example being his thwarted attempt to pack the Supreme Court in 1937 with additional associate justices of his own choosing, affected the Supreme Court well into the 1940s. Although the court-packing plan failed, Roosevelt appointed eight supreme court justices during his term in office, and they frequently reflected his liberal social perspective. The entry of the United States into World War II...